Stories of Vigilante Justice as a Witness to God

I recently watched two action movies (Shooter and 24-Season 8) where the main character, a lethal killer, found himself up against a government system determined to cover up the evil it sent him to expose.  The government's moral vision was so corrupted that it though it best to protect the guilty and punish the hero laboring for justice.  In this circumstance, the main character determined that he needed to take matters into his own hands—which meant hunting the guilty down and executing them. 

Of course, this vigilante justice—where an individual appoints himself to bring justice to wrongdoers—probably has an unethical aspect to it.  Only certain people are actually allowed to execute the guilty, namely, those appointed by and acting as agents of the state.  But at the same time, we love these stories and probably find ourselves cheering the main character on. 

Is this story a myth—a story with a transcendent ideal embodied in it?  These stories of vigilante justice are based first on the belief that sometimes a system cannot be trusted, and that the correct moral analysis of a situation is one rooted in the heart of a righteous individual.  An upright heart, not a system, is ultimately the only thing that reliably perceives what is right and what is deserved.  Second, these stories are based on the belief that while the guilty may go free in our human systems of governance and justice, they should not and (hopefully) will not escape the righteous judgement of that individual.  Our love for these stories speaks to a deep human belief that the right perception of justice sometimes resides in one righteous heart, and that that the guilty should meet that righteous heart and receive their due judgement. 

I see in this ideal a unconscious longing for and witness to God, an echo in our heart of the fact that a truly correct moral perception is found only in one heart—the heart of God.  Our human systems are corrupted by human frailty and human evil.  But even when our systems fail, when the guilty walk free in them and we are blind to it, they will not escape justice itself, for there is one who sees the truth.  And that one who sees the truth is the exact one who will bring the guilty what they deserve: judgement, execution, justice.

This is incredible.  These stories testify to a longing for justice, and even a vision of justice, that is directly fulfilled in God.  Our hearts truly do seem draw to the story of God...